


san francisco's calling us

by hammerhorror



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: California, Dialogue Heavy, Feelings, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Morality, don't know how to tag this really it's two guys who silently like each other talking about things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:01:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27928702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hammerhorror/pseuds/hammerhorror
Summary: Mike laughs. It’s like a glimpse of summertime in the midst of the wet, cold, San Francisco winter. He doesn’t call Stan a fucking weirdo. “You would be the type to hate your own philosophical enlightenment,” he says, smiling.‘I’ve really missed you so fucking much,’ Stan wants to say. Bigger and deeper and sadder than any time he’s said it over the phone. He doesn’t. They pay for their food and their teas and head back out into the cold.
Relationships: Mike Hanlon/Stanley Uris
Comments: 8
Kudos: 11





	san francisco's calling us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alliecatastrophe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alliecatastrophe/gifts).



> this is for allie, ultimate stanlon champion. at first i wanted to do something a little lighter, but it ultimately morphed into a short piece about grief and closure and responsibility. i hope you like it. 
> 
> content warning: alcohol, overall theme of grief/death/loss of a parent
> 
> title from “piazza, new york catcher” by belle & sebastian

“I moved to California to be warm,” Beverly says, shivering in her dark blue peacoat. She has her back and one foot up against the side of the brick wall at the front of the bar, cigarette held daintily between her pale, thin fingers. “I moved to California because I didn’t want to be cold anymore! And yet here I am, freezing cold.”  
  
“You moved to _San Francisco_ ,” Stan says. “It’s _December_.”  
  
“And every December I ask myself, why did I move here?”  
  
The bar’s old neon sign reading **TRIVIA NIGHT** flickers on and off, the same way it’s been flickering for three years. And it’s possible that it was flickering before that, but three years ago is when Beverly met Stan at the mailboxes in the basement of their apartment complex and wrangled him into getting drinks with her friends, so three years ago is the first time Stan ever saw the flickering neon sign.  
  
It’s been a while since the whole group has gotten together for drinks and trivia, but it’s a special occasion tonight—Mike is back in town.  
  
“So, Richie and Eddie got Mike from the airport. And he’s staying at this AirBNB. I just don’t get it. He has all of us in the city and he chooses to stay at some random AirBNB. I told him he could stay with me, but he said he would just get on my nerves,” Beverly says.  
  
“You know how he is,” Stan says.  
  
“Mmmhmm, I know,” Beverly says, nodding. “I mean—he’s here to work, so I understand! I understand he wants to, like, cultivate his vibe or whatever. I’m just greedy and I miss him.”  
  
“I know,” Stan says. “I miss him, too.”  
  
Stan _misses_ Mike, agonizingly so. He tells Mike he misses him whenever they get the chance to talk, which isn’t often, maybe once or twice a month. No one talks to Mike much since he moved out to the east coast six months ago. His intention hadn’t been to move. He flew out to Maine to tend to his family after the death of his father. He flew back out to California. He couldn’t bear the guilt of being away from his mother, so he flew back out to Maine once more and there he stays.  
  
He works at a local library. He helps out on his family’s farm. He takes care of his mother, who he fears is slowly withering away without the love of her life. He’s busy, so Stan only gets to talk to him once or twice a month. And every time they talk, Stan tells him that he misses him.  
  
“I miss you too, Stanley,” is what he says—he always says _Stanley_ , not Stan.  
  
“Oh!” Beverly’s phone _dings_ from the pocket of her coat. She digs it out and squints at the screen. “That’s Eddie,” she says. “Traffic’s bad, they told us to wait inside.”  
  
Beverly and Stan go inside and they order their regular drinks and wait for the other three at their regular table. They vow to win big to honor Mike’s grand return to the great and frigid and dirty and noisy and beautiful city of San Francisco, though tonight is mostly just about continuing their traditional gathering of hearts than actually winning at trivia.  
  
Still, when the others arrive, Mike greets Beverly and Stan warmly and says that he’s been brushing up on his trivia skills for weeks.  
  
“How do you practice at trivia?” Richie asks. Richie just knows things. That’s why he’s a valuable asset to their team. He’s never made an intentional effort to learn anything in his life, but he knows things anyway for no reason other than his unfortunate attention deficit has encouraged a lifetime of useless knowledge absorption, like a neurotic, restless sponge.  
  
“Just reading. Listening to podcasts. Watching _Jeopardy_. Things like that. Finding a rabbit hole to get lost in,” Mike says. “I’m really into 19th century Russian literature lately.”  
  
“Who among us _isn’t_ into 19th century Russian literature?” Beverly asks.  
  
“Mmm.” Eddie raises his hand, unable to speak as he downs the entirety of his gin and tonic in one manic go. He sets the glass down. “Me,” he says. “I’m not into 19th century Russian literature.”  
  
“Really, Eds? No Zhukovsky? No Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy? This is why we never win at trivia night,” Richie says. Stan has always thought that Richie looks at Eddie the way some people look at fine art. Not the way some people look at art to be discerning or critical, but the way some people look at art to bask in its beauty and profundity and to cry and to feel reborn.   
  
“No,” Eddie says, “we never win at trivia night because you know nothing about Japanese cinema.” And Eddie looks at Richie the way some people look at art to be discerning or critical, when they ask themselves, _but what does it mean? What does it represent? What is the artist saying? What is the larger overall implication of the piece_? And Stan has been silently watching them look at each other like this for the last three years since Beverly wrangled them all together to be a trivia team.  
  
Three years ago, Mike bought everyone a round of drinks after Stan secured them a close win by knowing the name of the fourth wife of King Henry VIII, married for only six months, divorced because the king didn’t think she was as pretty as what her portrait had promised. “The original catfish,” Richie had said. They all laughed.  
  
Stan looks at Mike. Is he allowed to look at Mike as shamelessly as Richie and Eddie look at each other? Is it okay for Stan to sit across the table for Mike and let his eyes bore into his smile, and his eyes, and the curve of his jaw? He wishes he could see himself from the outside looking in, just for a minute, just to know if it reads more desperate than hopelessly romantic.  
  
Trivia starts. Stan shakes the thoughts straight out of his skull and focuses on the game.

They lose, but Mike is impressed by Stan’s knowledge of baseball. In 2002, which major league catcher with a batting average of .308 issued a statement to address rumors of homosexuality? Mike Piazza.   
  
“My dad,” Stan explains. He always feels like he’s talking in monosyllabic grunts when he talks about his dad, because it’s still difficult to accept that his dad is dead, even after two years. And here is Mike, willingly uprooted from his life in California to go save the family farm in Maine, because it’s what his dad would have wanted and it’s what his mother needs. “My dad loves baseball,” he says, making a better effort. “Loved.”  
  
“Mine too,” Mike says fondly. “They would have been good friends for sure.”  
  
Eddie and Richie go home together, same old dance. Beverly’s mood deflates over the course of the evening, she really shouldn’t drink as much as she does. Stan and Mike will get her home safely. They see her off and wait like sentinels until the door to her apartment is locked securely. Then Mike takes the elevator with Stan up two floors and walks him to his apartment. They say goodnight. Just as Stan as closing the door behind him Mike says, “Hey—Stanley,” very nervously.  
  
“Yeah?” Stan says, peeking out through the door.  
  
“I was wondering if you would want to get lunch tomorrow or something,” Mike says. “I have a couple of days before this project starts, so—you know.”  
  
“Oh,” Stan says. “Yeah. Sure. That would be nice.”  
  
Mike smiles, eyes shining beautifully even in the ugly yellow-tinted overhead light of the hallway.

They meet for Thai food, but neither of them really has much of an appetite and they both end up packing up their meals to go. They do, however, both nurse Thai cold tea over an hour of conversation about Mike’s job at the library.  
  
“I think it’s amazing,” he says, smiling broadly, “that children are so good. If this experience is teaching me anything, it’s that children are resilient, and curious, and incredibly good. They really want to learn. They just need to be encouraged to do so. Whenever a kid comes in and wants to sign up for their own library card, I have to stop myself from crying. We have this weekly program where every Saturday one of the elementary school teachers comes by and reads a book to the kids and they do, like, themed arts and crafts. And when the kids found out I was leaving for California, they all wanted to hug me and made me promise I’ll come back. It felt strange. Being sad to leave Maine.”  
  
“I get it,” Stan says. He runs his finger along the condensation forming on his glass of tea. “When my dad died, I stayed with my mom for a while. I was thinking, fuck, I don’t want to go back to Georgia. Then once I was there, I never wanted to leave.”  
  
“It must be the familiarity. The rose-colored nostalgia.”  
  
“It has to be. Nothing was ever as good as it feels when you’re sad and wishing you could go back in time,” Stan says. He doesn’t have conversations like this very often. Dense, heavy, emotional topics like this are Mike’s bread and butter. Whenever Mike and Richie get stoned, they always end up having these existential revelations, usually something like, _I just won’t BE sad anymore. Sadness is unavoidable, so I’ll skip to acceptance_ or something like that, which Stan thinks is funny and admirable of them.  
  
Beverly and Eddie get drunk to open the floodgates and commiserate and cry together. They don’t make revelatory emotional discoveries like Richie and Mike, but they talk about their childhoods, and they cry, and they hug each other. It’s significantly less funny to Stan. And he sits among his despondent friends and keeps everything he’s ever felt locked up as tight as he can. He will have no existential revelation and he certainly will not cry in the arms another.  
  
“Everything in that town reminds me of my dad,” Mike says quietly. His mood has shifted to something a little more somber. The pain is still fresh. “Like he’s a ghost living in every corner. Everything feels haunted. And I feel like I can hear him pacing around the kitchen late at night when I’m the only one awake.”  
  
“Do you believe in all that?” Stan asks.  
  
Mike blinks, surprised by the question. “Ghosts? Well, yes. I suppose I do. Who’s to say, you know? What about you?”  
  
“Hard to say. My dad… towards the end, he wanted to talk about. Well, Jewish interpretations of demons, and ghosts, and things like that. The dybbuk and golems. Misappropriated life-energy. So of course, I talked with him. We would have the same conversations day in and day out. He was lost and confused from one hour from the next, so I would sit with him and let him talk about whatever was on his mind. I suppose I’ve always been on the skeptical side, but I just started thinking…”  
  
“How can we really know,” Mike says.  
  
“Right. Am I that egotistical to think I have all of the answers? But I have to admit, I didn’t like coming to this conclusion at all. The world was less terrifying when I thought I had it all figured out,” Stan says. He folds his hands in his lap and patiently waits for Mike to call him a fucking weirdo. It’s one thing to adhere to an acceptable cultural belief in ghosts and another to tell your friend that your father’s final weeks were spent hashing over all the ways a soul can go wayward once the body has died and that this left you morbidly questioning your own lifelong set of beliefs for months after.  
  
Mike laughs. It’s like a glimpse of summertime in the midst of the wet, cold, San Francisco winter. He doesn’t call Stan a fucking weirdo. “You would be the type to hate your own philosophical enlightenment,” he says, smiling.  
  
_I’ve really missed you so fucking much_ , Stan wants to say. Bigger and deeper and sadder than any time he’s said it over the phone. He doesn’t. They pay for their food and their teas and head back out into the cold. 

“I have to admit,” Mike says. He’s swinging the bag holding his Thai leftovers back and forth as they walk, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t think I’ve ever been in this situation before. I’ve never… not known what I’m doing to this extent.”  
  
“About…?” Stan says, not wanting to presume. Mike doesn’t say anything. “Your mother?”   
  
“Yeah. I guess that’s the biggest part of it. Stan, I don’t… want to live in Maine forever. When my old boss called me to ask for help on this project, I nearly put in my resignation at the library that evening. I miss… everything, I miss my life here, I miss you guys, holy shit. I miss you so much, Stanley, you know? But my mom… I think about all the things I owe her.”  
  
They’re walking back to Stan’s apartment. It isn’t too far from the Thai place, so Mike told Stan as they were packing up their food that he would walk Stan home and then take an Uber back to his AirBNB.  
  
Stan thinks to himself, _is this more than I deserve?_ as if Mike has ever been greedy on casual, simple displays of affection. Maybe it’s just because this Mike is a little different from the Mike of six months ago who had yet to move to Maine and wasn’t torn between manifesting two diametrically opposed versions of himself. Is Stan just greedily taking and taking when Mike really needs to be alone, to figure himself out, to figure out what California and Maine and his mother and his friends and the ghost of his father pacing in the kitchen means for where he chooses to rest his head?  
  
“Your parents did a lot for you,” Stan says. He’s met them a handful of times. Warm, compassionate, always encouraging the best in Mike. His father’s loss hit him hard. He fears losing his mother sometime in the next few years. He mentioned that directly after the funeral. He called Stan and told him that and then he never mentioned it again, but Stan remembers.  
  
“My mom needs me. She’s broken without him. I don’t know what to do,” Mike says. He looks at Stan worryingly. Like he wants to ask a question, but he’s afraid of the answer. Like he wants to ask Stan to tell him what to do. Stan isn’t going to dole out unsolicited life advice today. It isn’t what Mike needs.  
  
“You know, I just read this book,” Stan says. “Didn’t know anything about it. Just picked it up at the bookstore because the cover was pretty. It’s about this brother and sister pair that live in a beautiful house with their father. Their father bought the house for their mother, who hated the house, and left them to travel and do mission work.”  
  
Mike nods attentively, like he’s hanging off of every word.  
  
“The father remarries, and the stepmother loves the house and hates the children. Once the father dies, she casts the brother and sister out. But they’ll drive up to the house and smoke and talk. About everything. About their lives. Their parents. Everything. It’s an obsession, especially for the older sister. Anyway, in the end, the mother does come back, and they return to the house, and the stepmother has dementia and needs care. The mother decides to care for her. And it made me so… mad.”  
  
“Mad,” Mike repeats considerately.  
  
“It made me mad that the mother ran off and left her children to fend for themselves and then she comes back and for her own selfish sense of, I don’t know, service or moral duty, decides she now wants to stay in the house and care for the woman who made her children’s lives miserable. There was no sense of closure there for anyone who suffered. I was infuriated. This woman, in her selflessness, was still the most selfish character in the book. Maybe it’s not the perfect comparison, but it just makes you wonder, I guess, about our relationships… what we owe people, the transactional nature of love. How we pay people back.”  
  
“Do you think love is transactional?” Mike asks.  
  
“I guess I do. I think it’s only when I look at my parents that it gets confusing. My dad was strict with me growing up. He could be a little cold. When I moved back home to take care of him with my mom, I wanted him to feel warm and loved. Was I paying him back for feeding me, and clothing me, and housing me?”  
  
“I think that’s just who you are,” Mike says. “I think you’re a very warm and loving person, Stanley.”  
  
Stan would very obviously be blushing if his cheeks weren’t already red from the cold. He’s thankful that Mike doesn’t know that. “I did what felt right in the moment. And yes, at some moments, it felt transactional. I would get frustrated and want to leave. And I’d ask myself, how can I do that to my dad, after everything he did for me?”  
  
“I think I see what you mean. In the end, it still all comes back to you. And what you wanted and what would make you feel better,” Mike says.  
  
“Right.”  
  
“Is that really selfishness? You gave up a lot of your time, Stan, and it was hard for you to watch your dad… waste away like he did.”  
  
“It was hard. Life is hard. I know I did a lot for him. I did it because my mother needed me, I did it because I felt guilty, I did it because I didn’t want any regret hanging over for the rest of my life. I did it because I wanted closure and I wanted to be able to look back at my actions and assure myself I did the best I could,” Stan says. “I would call that selfishness. There were collateral benefits to the selfishness.”  
  
They reach Stan’s apartment complex. They stop at the entrance and stare at each other for a moment. Each exhale sends out condensed breaths that then mingle together, like a crystallized bridge between the two of them, there one moment and gone the next.  
  
“I miss my life here,” Mike says.  
  
“That’s fine. That’s normal. I would be concerned if you didn’t,” Stan says.  
  
“I’m missing out on a lot of time with,” Mike says, and he pauses, and he takes a breath. “With you. There’s a lot I’ve always wanted to… tell you, but it hasn’t been a good time for the last six months.”  
  
“There’s a lot I want to tell you, too,” Stan says. There’s something hilarious about it. It’s like a business proposal between representatives from two different companies. Stan has always been reserved in this way. But Mike has always struck Stan as more of a romantic.  
  
“Is it okay if I wait just a little longer?” Mike asks.  
  
“Mike. Yes. It’s fine,” Stan says. He smiles, and Mike lets out a visible, heavy sigh of relief.  
  
“I’ll come back to California,” he says.  
  
“That’s good. I would love for you to be here again.”  
  
“And then it’ll be the right time.”  
  
“It will be,” Stan says. “I’m certain of that.” Perhaps their confidence is unearned. A silent mutual agreement doesn’t mean much, but still. Richie and Mike, stoned, would call this manifesting. It’s all about energy or something like that. Stan isn’t that far into the metaphysical.  
  
Mike leans forward and lightly kisses Stan on the cheek. Stan returns the favor with a light, chaste peck on Mike’s lips.  
  
And whether it’s transactional or sheer selfishness remains to be discussed.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter!](https://twitter.com/hereditary_2018)


End file.
